Demystifying sustainable soy in Brazil

Mendelson Lima, Carlos Antonio da Silva Junior, Lisa Rausch, Holly K. Gibbs and Jerry Adriani Johann

Land Use Policy, 2019, vol. 82, issue C, 349-352

Abstract: Brazil is the second largest soybean producer in the world with a planted area in the crop year 2017/18 of 33.347 million hectares, distributed in the Pampa, Atlantic Forest, Cerrado, and Amazon biomes. Through remote sensing techniques we show that the new agricultural frontier of soy is no longer in the Amazon, but in the last continuous areas of Cerrado, present in the region known as MATOPIBA. The soybean production chain has been striving to present to its overseas customers a soy produced in a sustainable way, without the removal of forests. Our data challenge its main program, the Amazonian Soy Moratorium, and we call attention to the conservation need of the MATOPIBA Cerrado, which is not monitored by Soy Moratorium.

Keywords: Amazon; Cerrado; MATOPIBA; Conservation policies; Soy expansion; Agricultural frontier (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:82:y:2019:i:c:p:349-352

DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2018.12.016

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